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A study involving researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Gothenburg University in Sweden has found that low levels of a protein called PDGFRb are associated with particularly good results of radiotherapy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The study, which is published in the journal
Clinical Cancer Research, also suggests that the efficacy of radiotherapy can be improved with drugs that block this protein.
Some 900 women in Sweden are diagnosed with DCIS (ductalcarcinoma in situ), the earliest possible form of invasive breast cancer. Standard treatment is surgery and subsequent radiotherapy. Although the prognosis is generally good, some ten per cent of patients suffer a recurrence within ten years of diagnosis.